


the complicated lives of criminals

by ThisQueenShallConquer



Category: Black Lagoon
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Sharing a Bed, revy struggles with feelings, rock gets injured
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 16:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5170283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisQueenShallConquer/pseuds/ThisQueenShallConquer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>as many times as she has saved his ass she never actually thought he’d get shot, she never thought she’d have to see the exact colour of his blood or feel the sticky sensation of it against her skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the complicated lives of criminals

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I hope you like this. I edited this by myself so there's bound to be mistakes but *shrugs* I've spent way too much time on this already.
> 
> Enjoy!

* * *

Smoking calms her, it's repetitive and familiar. Revy knows it's bad for her but it's one of the few things that can actually soothe her. Sure, It might mean that she'll kick the bucket a few years earlier but with a job like hers, living in a place like Roanapur, it's far more likely for her to get shot than to die because of her fucked up lungs.

She’s one of the living dead, it’s unlikely that she would meet such a boring end. Slow deaths like that belong to those who are still part of the normal world. People like her die in gutters not hospital beds.

It had been a long shitty day to end a long shitty week and, she’ll admit, she’s feeling a little sorry for herself. Revy doesn’t often allow herself to wallow in self-pity, it’s pathetic and indulgent and it makes her feel things that she’s 110% sure she’s not ready to deal with.

So yeah, she might be having a brief lapse in judgement, throwing herself a little pity-party, sat in her room alone whilst her co-workers were at the ‘Flag. Or maybe her leaving them there was some kinda unconscious move to piss him off. She always seems to be finding ways to piss him off, whether she’s aware of it or not.

“Hey” he says as he opens her door without knocking. It pisses her off even more, she exhales through her nose. It’s ridiculous really, out of everyone she knows he’s had the best fucking upbringing but the prick still ended up with shitty manners.

“Could’ve been gettin’ dressed in here, Rock” she huffs out as he hangs in the doorway, acting like some kinda vampire that needs her permission to enter, or maybe it’s the fact that she has both her guns sat on the bed with her that’s making him wary. Though, surely, he knows that the chances of her shooting him are pretty much 0.

His body is already full of enough bullet holes.

Rock rolls his eyes, he looks more unkempt than usual, wearing his vest instead of his white button-up and tie, his hair falling into his face. “Like you get changed, you just sleep in your clothes. That’s why they get so crumpled all the time”.

It’s the sort of thing he would normally say but the way lips move around the words, the way concern for her is deeply evident in his eyes make it all seem so forced. She can’t even bring herself to make any sounds of annoyance.

She takes another drag of her cigarette instead.

“What are you doing here?” She asks after a pause. She kinda feels like a pouting two year old who’s having a tantrum and maybe she is, if she’s honest with herself.

He shrugs, gives her one of his little smiles like he’s walking on eggshells around her “Dutch and Benny are wasted and starting to wax poetic. It kinda gets old after a while, especially since I’m still sober”

“You should’ve gotten drunk as well then, moron” she drawls, the long day and smoke have made her drowsy, the comfort of the bed beneath her, the deep ache in her body and the feeling of the worn covers under her bare feet aren’t helping to keep her awake.

“I drank as much as they did. I can’t help it if I can handle my drink better than everyone else on this island” he shoots back from the doorway. Maybe she should invite him in? He’s been drinking and he’s probably in pain and she saw how much blood he lost. But she also wants him to suffer. She hopes suffering will teach him not to do that kinda crazy shit again, deep down she knows it’s probably pointless though.

Rock doesn’t let his own pain stop him from trying to help people.

“Jumped up prick” she snorts, it’s more affectionate than anything, as close as she gets to affection anyway. He’s always been able to drink the rest of them under the table, he’s had a lot of practise though, with his ridiculous corporate bosses back in Japan, forcing alcohol down their employee’s throats only to beat the shit out of them later.

She remembers what his bosses did to him. Things he mentioned only in passing but were now embedded in her brain.

“You weren’t so cocky last week when you were sprawled out in the bathroom, hugging the toilet”

“I wasn’t that bad” he said entering the room, probably after realising he’s in no immediate danger. Revy notices he’s got a six pack of beer, it’s not rum but it lightens her mood a little.

“You had drool smeared all over you” her lips twist into a smirk around her cigarette. “Hey, before you start mocking me,” he says, sitting down on the floor beside her bed, back resting against the metal frame, “remember that I came bearing gifts”. Rock frees one of the cans and tosses it to her, it ends up whacking her on the thigh. She’s about to kick him in the shoulder, hard, like she would any other day, but she can see the gauze poking out from the left shoulder of his vest top, can still see the deep red of his blood.

She wants to tell him that he probably shouldn’t be drinking at all, not after being shot (Twice!) and certainly not after having Sawyer yank the bullets back out of his shoulder. She keeps her mouth shut though, she’d never hear the end of it from Eda if she let on that she actually gave a shit about him.

“I went looking for you at the Rip-off Church but Eda said you weren’t there” he tells her as he opens his own can.

“Didn’t feel like playing cards….or dealing with Eda” she mumbles. He knows her well, she realizes, the Rip-off Church is where she usually runs to when she’s pissed at him.

The conversation lulls and Revy takes this as an opportunity to put out her cigarette on the windowsill next to the other scorch marks and cigarette corpses.

“You still mad at me?” his voice sounds how she feels - worn thin.

“Yeah.”

He snorts because it’s just so typical Revy. Most people are nice to their friends after a near death experience. Revy gets mad, like he asked for it, like he was planning on taking off and leaving her.

“Why?”

“Because you’re a fucking moron!” she takes a large gulp of beer, it’s not enough to get her even slightly buzzed “you and your fucking white-knights complex”

“I’m not sorry about it. You know I’m not”

“I know” Revy huffs “it’s why you piss me off so much. What the fuck were you thinking? I’m the gunslinger, you’re the negotiator. You had no idea what the fuck you were getting into. What the hell were you even thinking, Rock?”

His eyes focus on her, his gaze steady, his expression calm. It’s like he’s waiting for something, some reaction from her. It’s then that Revy realises that she had subconsciously reached for one of her guns, her fingers curled around the handle. She releases it, lets it bounce back onto her mattress. He knows she won’t kill him, he’s suddenly aware, in this moment, of his own importance to her.

He might not be scared right now but she is. It’s like a sudden revelation and it’s fucking terrifying. The amount she cares for him scares her.

“I wasn’t thinking, that was the point” he says softly, shifting his gaze elsewhere “I just moved and next thing I know I’m on the floor and there’s blood everywhere” he says easily, like it wasn’t _his_ blood that was sprayed across the deck of The Lagoon.

Revy thinks that if she hadn’t grown up the way she did, if she had killed a few less people, if she had enjoyed doing it a little less, then she might have felt sick at the memory of him bleeding out. Instead, a cold empty feeling curdles in her stomach and all she can remember is the shock because as many times as she has saved his ass she never actually thought he’d get shot, she never thought she’d have to see the exact colour of his blood or feel the sticky sensation of it against her skin.

Whilst she had plenty of people here in Roanapur, whist she makes friends very easily, whilst she has Eda and Dutch and Benny, Rock is probably the person she’s closest to. She hadn’t really considered it before today but if he died it would really mess her up.

He may drive her insane with his noble ideology and his need to save people and his stupid fucking optimism but he’s probably the most decent person that she’s ever met. He’s certainly the most decent person to ever give two shits about her. Whilst she certainly doesn’t want him and his stupid ass white-knight complex getting in her way…she likes having him around. He’s probably her best friend. They balance each other out, he cools her rage and she stops his blind belief in people from getting him killed.

Rock, on the other hand, wasn’t born into this world, he grew up in one where the biggest tragedy was not being accepted into the over-priced college of your parent’s dreams and the biggest danger was not looking both ways before crossing the street. He wasn’t built for this world, he was surviving because he was smart and because Revy had made sure he hadn’t been killed, but she didn’t know how much longer she’d be able to keep this up. Another slip up and he’d be gone.

_‘And you’ll be alone’_ her head whispers.

“Hey” he says softly, voice slightly slurred as he drums his fingers against the side of her foot. He has a hand wrapped loosely around her ankle now, his second (or maybe third?) beer in his other hand and he’s looking at her like he does when he tries to read her. It usually makes her angry when he does that, but right now she can’t bring herself to care “you haven’t said anything in five whole minutes. I’m waiting for you to scream at me or insult me or something” his smile is weak and she knows he’s trying to make some sort of amends.

She knows that he can tell that this is different from all the other times she’s been pissed at him. It’s not like when she’s angry about the attempts to read her mind or the way he deals with clients or his unwillingness to hurt nasty, pieces of shit, criminals. This is real and it’s raw and _she really doesn’t want him to fucking die._

“Just thinkin’”she mumbles as she lays back on her mattress, her beer is barely touched but still held tightly in her hand. She doesn’t alter the position of her left leg though, she kinda really likes the feel of his fingers against her foot and is unwilling to disrupt it just yet. “Let’s just get this straight here and now, Rock, okay? You try and ‘save me’ again, you try and get in the way of what I do and my job and I swear to God they’ll be no way in hell you’ll ever be a able to have kids, alright?”

There’s a pause before she hears him chuckle, maybe the booze are getting to him finally “Alright, Rev” he slurs, it’s a name he only calls her when there’s alcohol in his system and it does weird things to her insides. “That’s fine, can’t say I’m in any hurry to go diving in front of bullets again, even for your sake, ‘fucking hurts” he mumbles as his fingers rub circles in the skin just below her ankle bone, the feeling of his calloused fingertips against such a soft patch of skin is strangely comforting. She resists the urge to hum in satisfaction.

“Good. Don’t get yourself killed. It’d be a pain in the ass for Dutch to find someone else who can actually read and write in this shit-hole city”

She wants to say _‘don’t leave me’_ but that’s desperate and needy and Revy doesn’t deal with either of those things.

“I’ll do my best, alright?” he says gently and she knows he’s taking it to heart. They joke around a lot but he knows that this is serious, that this is a rare glimpse through the wall Revy has carefully constructed around herself.

He looks at her for confirmation, she nods in agreement and he noticeably relaxes. They’re good now, they’re fine, the conflict is over until the next one.

She suddenly feels at peace laid out here on her bed. The smell of smoke in the air, the sound of police sirens outside, the taste of beer on her lips, her partner alive and breathing and close to her.

As she begins to drift off she can feel Rock get up and gently tug her beer out of her hand, placing it on the windowsill, she feels him put her guns on the floor and pull her covers over her bare legs. She rolls onto her side and reaches out, not even opening her eyes, gripping his vest and lightly tugging him closer to the bed. A silent plea.

He pauses before climbing awkwardly into the small bed beside her, trying to not injure his shoulder further. Revy cracks open an eye, drags half the covers over him. She catches his small smile before closing them again, letting out a small huff. She starts to fall asleep, slightly irritated by the loss of his fingers against her skin. The thought has barely crossed her mind before his fingers continue their circular patens against her hip bone and she can hear his steady breathing.

It’s a rare moment of happiness for them.


End file.
